Speaker 1: Guillaume BUFFET, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)Speaker 2: Veronika Klindova , Civil Society, Eastern European GroupSpeaker 3: Scott Brown, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)Speaker 4: Christine Vidal, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

How to empower civil society to face hate speech?

The virality and universality offered by Internet to hate speeches brings new complexity and imply a redefinition of approaches. Reporting tools, today main levers for actions, are not sufficient to tackle the whole phenomenon. Hence, it urges to equip citizens with methods and tools enabling them to take action against online hate. Some methods, tools and approaches exist through innovative projects. This session will answer policy questions and operational responses by the presentation of selected projects, by their founders:
- Project elaborated by civil society complementing the law regulation to tackle online hate speeches.
- Best practices to empower civil society and citizens to prevent extremism
- New approaches for the educational sector

In terms of agenda, this event is supposed to be the third of the three workshops we designed (the first one is "Hack The Hate: Empower society to face hate speech", and the second one is "Hack The Hate: Imagine a toolbox to face hate speech").

Format:

Other - 90 MinFormat description: This session aims to be directed like a pitches session: between 7 and 9 innovative founders of innovative projects from worlwide civil society will quickly present their tools and their practices to inspire citizens and the educational sector.

Interventions:

Guillaume Buffet, CEO of U and founder of the Seriously project, will present the Seriously’s approach designed and developed by the think tank Renaissance Numérique in a collaborative way with associations and academics.This project has been identified as on of the best practice by a recent OSCE’s report.

Scott Brown, CEO of Breakthrough Media, will present the activities of the company. This private company works closely with the UK government and the civil society in order to co-create online campaigns and movements that address complex social challenges, including extremism.

Veronika Pavlíková Klindová, founder of the Slovak group #iamhere (#somtu), will talk about this approach which counters hate on Facebook in a collaborative strategy.

Christine Vidal, President of the association Le Bal, will present the work her association has made in a classroom. This project consists in teaching the student how they can mobilize the logical and principles used by the authors of conspiracy videos in order to create their own conspiracy theory video about “the truly identity of cats”! This program shows and helps identifying methods used by conspiracy theorists to brainwash while manipulating images, facts and using specific sounds.

(TBC) Emmanuelle Daviet is a journalist working for the public broadcasting network, France Inter, she is a specialist in education and dedicated to the Interclass' project. This project aims to sensitize teens towards media and information, by accompagning them to realize a radio report.

and/or

(TBC) Rose Marie Farinella is a primary school teacher in France, she is conducting a project of Media education towards kids aged from 10. She won several awards (from UNESCO and national contests) thanks her commitment to critical thinking. She is also partnering with a french vlogger, Hygiène Mentale, to promote this project.

9 international projects will be presented in total. We're discussing with the co-organizers to identify and select 3 more.

Diversity:

The panel has been designed carefully keeping in mind gender parity and region diversity of individuals who work on these issues across the world with different cultures of regulation, approaches and experiences. Note that Renaissance Numerique is a stakeholder (member of steering committee) of the French Chapter of the IGF, but has not yet contributed to the global IGF.

The emergence of the Internet, and more recently social networks, have considerably changed the way ideas are produced and how they circulate. By broadening the opportunity offered to each of us to express ourselves and take part in a lot of different debates, society’s digital networking paves the way for a real discursive democracy. However, while this reflects an unprecedented progress in democracy, this new environment mark the end of gatekeepers, considered legitimate for the expression of opinions in the public space, and the emergence of new public opinions. This is why groups that did not previously have access to public speech have developed a worrying strike force on the Internet.

The current approach, prioritizing regulation of the issue only by focusing resources on the law, is running into major pitfalls. On the one hand, the coercive mobilization of the judicial system leads public actors to promote worrisome policies (legislative inflation, risk of privatization of justice). On the other hand, proceeding this way doesn’t allow us to tackle the entire issue, especially online hate speeches located in a legal “grey area” (for which a legal qualification is very difficult or nonexistent, e.g. stereotypes, prejudices, expressions of intolerance). Without challenging the respect and the necessity of the law, shaping the society foundations, it is necessary to encourage additional and complementary solutions.

This new dimension of the debate will be a major democratic step forward. This has to be accompanied by trainings and education, especially for the young people. This also implies making available tools and methods enabling to remove the current difficulties in order to make this space for discussion a more peaceful space.

This session seeks to present some of the most innovative projects selected operating across the world to counteract online hate speeches and to improve digital and media literacy.

Onsite Moderator:

Mike Fedida, Manager of the Seriously Project for the think tank Renaissance Numérique, will moderate the discussions.

Online Moderator:

A person from the think tank Renaissance Numérique will make the online moderation.

Rapporteur:

Student(s) from Master's programme in Peace Studies at Paris-Dauphine University

Discussion Facilitation:

The session will start with a 5-minute introduction by the moderator which captures the background and objectives of this Pitch session.

This Pitch session will present nine innovative initiatives across the world and will be composed through three parts on three different subjects (X, X and X). Each part of this session will be composed by three Pitchs on a specific topic (X for example). At the end of each part, the Q&A session will be opened.

The end of the Pitch session will also mark the end of the hackathon session.

During the closing, the moderator and the reporters will announce the general conclusions of the global Hack the Hate event (proposals selected, pitch presented and solution created).

Online Participation:

Renaissance Numérique and the co-organizers will set up online participation tools :
A website dedicated to the global event Hack The Hate will be available. Before the event starts, this will be used to promote the various sessions, to vote the main challenges (hackathon session), and to list the innovative best practices across the world. It will also be used to publicize a summary, report; to list the of the most relevant points and to map the best innovative practices after the event.
On social networks: relevant hashtags on Twitter (#IGF2018 and #HackTheHate), Facebook Live. During talks, a dedicated person will be in charge of both facilitating the visibility of the event and sharing the questions on Twitter.

During the session, a dedicated person will be in charge of both facilitating the visibility of the Pitch session and selecting the questions and feedbacks in real time and at the end.